Corel Vs. Adobe....

[Bobby H]

You ramble on stating as true things not in evidence. You might want to actually venture forth into the external reality and become passingly familiar with How Things Are rather than making proclamations indicating how you wish things were. You might look less the fool.

If you want to insult me as being a fool I'll insult you right back by calling you blind. If you can't see all the amateur rate visual garbage being installed next to city streets then you must be blind. If you want to defend that garbage and the amateurs producing it then you have no standards.

When I see a sign set in Arial Bold with the type artificially squeezed to fit a given space I know instantly that designer either didn't know what he was doing or just didn't care. It's just too difficult for the hack to scroll a little farther down the font list for another default font like Impact that might fit the space a little better.

There is no evidence that the rate of incompetence is pretty much the same among the proper equipped and formally educated as those making do with native ability and what ever artifacts they might have available to them. Conversely there are at least as many competent operators in the latter group as in the former.

Very easy to say, but you have no evidence to back up this claim. I'm drawing on 18 years of experience in this industry and what I have seen from competitors over that time.

You keep stressing tools and education. This would make you suspect as being one of the incompetents you rail against. Unlike other fields of endeavor, those requiring at least a modicum of creativity require some innate ability with which to begin.

Yes, anyone doing visually creative work must have talent. But talent alone is not enough to make someone productive. When I was in high school I could already draw and paint better than anyone else in school. Formal education helped me focus that talent and improve.

Either you can do this work or you can't. And if you can't do it, all of the really cool tools and formal education extant will not change that. Likewise, if you can do it, then those same tools and formal education might sharpen your abilities, but you can do journeyman work without them.

You are missing an important element to this: being able to make a good living doing the work.

Rank amateurs come into the graphics trade with little idea of what to charge. When they work freelance they drive down the prices of what more seasoned freelancers can charge. Fly by night sign shops sprout up and drive down the profit margins for sign companies that have been in business for decades. Too many customers can't tell the difference between good and bad design or good and bad signs so they just pick whatever company is doing the work for less. Good old race to the bottom economics.

The notion that one cannot learn a trade like graphic design unless one attends university is absurd. Do you think Da Vinci had a degree in graphic design?

Did I say attending a four year university was required? No. But the learning has to come from somewhere. A self taught amateur is not going to magically discover everything about typography, page layout, composition, color theory, etc. by just tinkering around on his own in CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator.

 

[bob]

...deletia...

Did I say attending a four year university was required? No. But the learning has to come from somewhere. A self taught amateur is not going to magically discover everything about typography, page layout, composition, color theory, etc. by just tinkering around on his own in CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator.

False dichotomy sport. There's a lot of area between attending a school and unabashedly hanging out your shingle. Most of those that have been around a while have served apprenticeships with a squad of crusty old master sign writers, printers, and type setters. Those apprenticeships might be formal or informal but as or more valid than skipping off to a school somewhere.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Wildwest... if the "designers vision" sucks there is no tool or medium that will make it "unsuck".

You are missing the point of my argument. I am not debating that at all. I agree with that sentiment 100%.

I am talking about tools that help efficiency and improving profit margin especially with regard to labor and how some features are necessary to accomplish those tasks in an efficient manner.

You are right, all that means nothing if its a crap design, but it means something for the people that are able to turn out quality.

 

[signmeup]

Did I say attending a four year university was required? No. But the learning has to come from somewhere. A self taught amateur is not going to magically discover everything about typography, page layout, composition, color theory, etc. by just tinkering around on his own in CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator.

You might be surprised at what can be learned by tinkering on your own.

I have a daughter in university right now. She will spend approximately 180 days per year at school. Her "4 years" will encompass about 720 days or slightly less than 2 years. Much of this time being spent on courses unrelated to her interest. (mandatory classes like "English lit") Many of the 720 days have only a single class. You seem to put a lot of importance on this pitifully small amount of time learning a craft. bob's mention of apprenticeships is apt. There's no money in it for "organized education" though.

Also if you want to be taken seriously about how "professional" your work is you might want to post up some of it so we can see whether you are indeed a master or just a master in your own mind.

 

[David Wright]

Signmeup beat me too it. I checked the college classes that were relevant in a graphics and art degree some time ago. Surprising small amount that was actually graphic arts related.
When I first started out in the late 70's before settling in signs I went to a few commercial art studios and agencies and most gave me the skinny on where the real education starts.

 

[Bobby H]

False dichotomy sport. There's a lot of area between attending a school and unabashedly hanging out your shingle. Most of those that have been around a while have served apprenticeships with a squad of crusty old master sign writers, printers, and type setters. Those apprenticeships might be formal or informal but as or more valid than skipping off to a school somewhere.

You might want to underscore that "been around awhile" part. There's lots of people trying to do sign design work who don't have years of previous experience doing graphics work and have no formal training whatsoever. The wannabes come and go in and out of the sign business, but without poisoning the trade in the process.

While I admire what some of the "crusty, old" letterheads could do with a few brushes and cans of 1-shot, that "art" is all but dead across most of the sign industry. Graphics programs, vinyl cutters and large format printers have killed it in most markets.

Apprenticeships in sign shops typically involve some sort of hand crafting process such as hand carving letters, sculpting objects, pin striping paint or bending neon. Design and computer use don't really figure into this area. Short term seminars of only 1 or 2 days come into play there if the design schlep even bothers signing up for one.

 

[signmeup]

BobbyH... what specifically do you do? I do 90% handcrafted stuff. I can assure you that I "design" everything before I start cutting. I don't just grab a plank and start hacking into it at one end and work my way over to the other.

 

[signswi]

Wildwest... if the "designers vision" sucks there is no tool or medium that will make it "unsuck".

Actually there is, it's called the design process, what you're getting at is if a graphic artist's vision sucks there's no tool or medium that will make it "unsuck". The difference is a trained designer has systems and iterative approaches to their craft and applicable historical knowledge which guides and overcomes draughts of blank paper inspiration. Design is the same as many white collar careers, most of it is research and hard work not just staring out a window waiting.

Taught approaches, along with art historical knowledge, etc. are what can* make a design education desirable over simply jumping into the field. But we're on a sign forum, and sign shop wages are incredibly low and the bar is even lower for shop designers so getting into arguments here about the value of high education is going to be skewed. Have the same conversation at an marketing agency and it's entirely different and different again from a web agency and different again from a motion production agency and different again from ...

*Obviously many schools churn out design students without a real education in design, yes it's a problem. It's also a problem in business schools, etc. etc.

 

[signswi]

You might be surprised at what can be learned by tinkering on your own.

I have a daughter in university right now. She will spend approximately 180 days per year at school. Her "4 years" will encompass about 720 days or slightly less than 2 years. Much of this time being spent on courses unrelated to her interest. (mandatory classes like "English lit") Many of the 720 days have only a single class. You seem to put a lot of importance on this pitifully small amount of time learning a craft. bob's mention of apprenticeships is apt. There's no money in it for "organized education" though.

Also if you want to be taken seriously about how "professional" your work is you might want to post up some of it so we can see whether you are indeed a master or just a master in your own mind.

Liberal arts has a value beyond being a degree mill that's targeted at a specific job. The entire goal of a liberal arts school is to produce well rounded members of society, not just cogs who fit into a particular job. The history of liberal arts colleges is actually quite interesting, we treat them totally different today from how they were concepted and how they approach academics. It's really on your daughter to make sure she finds good internships and networks and takes advantages of the opportunities that abound when you're in your early 20s.

If I had to give advice to a parent sending a kid off to a liberal arts school for a degree in design, I'd say make damn sure they require multiple semesters of internships and that the staff has a legit history in the field. I'd also want to be sure that post-graduate support is strong and that there is a vibrant culture of creation and exploration, a dedication to the field, and a willingness from the institution to push boundaries both technical and cultural.

 

[David Wright]

Bringing trade and technical schools to the forefront would be a positive development.
Too many people attending college that shouldn't be there.

 

[Joe Diaz]

Personally, I didn't learn a thing about how to design in Corel at College. I hardly had any design classes period. I did learn a lot of other things that I believe make me a bit more well rounded than I was going in, but to me my best education happened on the job, and growing up around the sign business. They should call it letterhead U. My folks used to drag me along to letterhead meets and walldog events when I was real young. I didn't know it then, but I learned much more about design and signs from the people I met at those events. That's why I still go. They're like family now.

I think it's all pieces to a puzzle. College education, On the job education, the right tools, the right environment, the desire to improve. etc. etc. It's a waste a time to argue what has more of an effect on different people, because it may be different for different people.

 

[Colin]

I think it's all pieces to a puzzle. College education, On the job education, the right tools, the right environment, the desire to improve. etc. etc. It's a waste a time to argue what has more of an effect on different people, because it may be different for different people.

I think that part is key.

 

[GAC05]

I put the gold stars and happy faces in my resume I received in the grueling years of formal art training I spent in K1 through 4.

 

[signswi]

During my years at an art museum my favorite exhibition every year was the curated show of all the K-12 art kids in the county. The high school art not so much, all terrible (high school emotions the world is awful everyone is a conformist but me etc.), but K-6? So much creativity and joy in the work.

 

[J Hill Designs]

completely off topic, but have you guys seen these?

http://thechive.com/2010/04/06/moster-engine-brings-childrens-drawings-to-life-11-photos/

 

[Bobby H]

BobbyH... what specifically do you do? I do 90% handcrafted stuff. I can assure you that I "design" everything before I start cutting. I don't just grab a plank and start hacking into it at one end and work my way over to the other.

You're talking about creative work that is done by hand. Not many people approach that casually, whether it's drawing, painting, carving, sculpting, glass blowing, etc. Most people know it takes talent and quite a bit of practice to become good at doing any of those activities.

It's not so easy to create great quality graphics and illustrations using computer-based tools either. But the applications will allow anyone to get far enough along to at least get something into a layout. Whether that something is any good or not is another matter.

Regarding what I do, I spend most of my time designing electric signs. Most of the work is done in the computer, although I'll often pencil sketch ideas before launching any computer applications. Sometimes I get to create illustrational elements to work into the design. That, naturally, involves more work done by hand, even if the final artwork is something 100% vector based.

I attached a couple examples to this note, nothing really out of the ordinary or location specific (a 10' x 40' billboard for Goodyear, a dual elevation channel letter building sign for a tanning salon in the Tulsa area and a dimensional layout of a T-Mobile sign). I prefer to stay relatively anonymous on this forum in order to be more free to speak my mind about sign industry topics and even certain PITA customers that would remain nameless. If I was posting under my full name and company I would have to be a lot more mum about things. I don't want my freedom of speech hurting my company's business.

Note: the T-Mobile example is a fairly standard channel letter design, but I included it to show the parallel extrusion effect one can do in CorelDRAW. Adobe Illustrator doesn't do those 3D extrude effects in its bevel and extrude dialog. That sort of steers things slightly back to the original topic.

 

[Rick]

I included it to show the parallel extrusion effect

Is that just to demonstrate dimension and add your depth call out? I see this once in a while when I get other designers shop drawings.

I use photo rendering where I can and draw out the side views. Or will make an extruded model in illustrator, occasionally they are required in exact scale so I draw as much as I can in CadTools, then use extrude in Illustrator.

 

[bob]

Y...a 10' x 40' billboard for Goodyear...

In your vast repertoire of education and experience didn't anyone teach you that copperplate and it's imitators and variations should only be used in small point sizes on documents and cards? That to do otherwise is considered less than good typography? That the purpose of those ghastly square serifs is to represent an engraver's chisel finials in small point sizes?

 

[Bobby H]

I'll add the parallel extrusion effect to certain channel letter jobs so the customer can clearly see the return and trim cap color in relation to the letter faces with the letter faces still kept in proper scale. Sometimes this works better than just showing a flat side view of the letter return and raceway. Depending on the job, sometimes side views with cross section examples of the electronics will be needed.

The extrusion dialog in Illustrator is frustrating to me. Unless I'm missing something there is no way to keep the letters fixed, facing forward and have a parallel extrusion grow out of the back of it in a given distance. In Corel, you can state how many inches up, down, right or left you want the extrusion to move in order to simulate depth. Illustrator always wants to shift the letters out of flat view, even with the isometric modes.

In your vast repertoire of education and experience didn't anyone teach you that copperplate and it's imitators and variations should only be used in small point sizes on documents and cards?

1. the customer wanted that type. 2. it's on a big 10' x 40' billboard. Not a tiny web page banner. I would have preferred using an extended sans serif face, like something from the Akzidenz Grotesk family.

 

[GAC05]

No bashing from me, but I do have to admit I was expecting a little more in the examples.

wayne k
guam usa